The amount of counterfeit pharmaceuticals entering the United States continues to increase. Such counterfeit pharmaceuticals are illegally imported into the United States, and are commonly available over the Internet. It may be difficult to determine the authenticity of a pharmaceutical, since the genuine and counterfeit products may have nearly identical appearances and markings (e.g., shape, color, size, packaging, labeling, etc.), even when viewed by professionals. The detection of counterfeit pharmaceuticals is important, since the efficacy of a counterfeit product can be lower than the actual product. In addition, the counterfeit product may contain toxic components or other components that might result in side effects which are not associated with the real product. Also, such counterfeit products also result in severe monetary loss to pharmaceutical companies and retailers.
Current methods for detecting counterfeit pharmaceuticals include vibrational spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, gas chromatography, liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. These methods, although often effective, require expensive and bulky instrumentation, and are generally performed in a laboratory.
It thus would be desirable to provide a new device and methods for detecting counterfeit pharmaceuticals and/or packaging from the pharmaceuticals and/or packaging from an authorized manufacturer, supplier and the like. It would be particularly desirable to provide such devices and methods that would be portable and usable at any desired location such as the inspection point for customs. It also would be particularly desirable to provide such devices that would be hand-held and use visible and/or non-visible light to illuminate suspect pharmaceuticals and/or packaging and determining from such illumination if the pharmaceuticals and/or packaging being examined are counterfeit pharmaceuticals and/or packaging. Such detection devices preferably would be simple in construction and less costly than prior art devices and such methods would not require highly skilled users to utilize the device.